An investigation into Asia Pacific Children’s Fund has opened amid concerns over mismanagement. 

The UK’s Charity Commission has unveiled a statutory inquiry and will investigate where its money goes. 

According to publicly available information sent to the regulator, the Asia Pacific Children’s Fund says its focus is “on orphans, primarily in the Laxmipur district of Bangladesh.” 

A website also shows a US address, though publicly available documentation on the Charity Commission website shows it registered in London.  

It claims to be based in the US on its website, though publicly available documentation on the Charity Commission website shows it registered in London. Abdul Khan, Numayar Gazi, Adananan Imran Haidar and Mohammed Yusuf Rab are listed as the four trustees. 

The regulator is concerned that the trustees cannot fully account for all their expenditure or explain how the orphanage and the funds it receives are managed.  

A lack of documentation and late statutory annual returns rang alarm bells for the charity regulator.  

According to World Without Orphans, 60 million children live in Bangladesh, eight times the number of children in France. Half of them grow up in abject poverty, while a third of young Bangladeshi girls are married before the age of 15.  

A report by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, with support from UNICEF, published in April displays first-hand reports from a sample of 7,200 children aged 5-17 years in hotspots in Dhaka and in the country’s eight divisions. 

UNICEF experts fear that the number of children living on the street in Bangladesh could be in the millions. 

Shafi Musaddique is a news editor at Alliance magazine.